Rainy days and Mondays
I woke up with a hangover and a sudden rush of adrenaline when I heard a sprinkler went off. It has been raining the whole night and to hear a sprinkler suddenly go off made me realized that I forgot to turn it off.
We had a crazy weekend. Carsten came back from the east coast after being gone for 4 days. On Friday, we headed for LA to apply for German visa and to report our marriage to the Philippine Consulate (long overdue!) I needed to report it first before I can ammend my passport. The drive was long and there was traffic most of the time. Another notch on my personal disasters list was when a missing 2 from the German Consulates address almost made us miss their office hours. I wrote down 622 Wilshire instead of 6222 Wilshire. What a disaster! It was at opposite ends of the boulevard (15 minutes away from each other). Whew! Thankfully, my husband is not the type to scream your head off when such inane mistakes are made. He merely shook his head, turned Pussycat Dolls loud and drove to right address as fast he could get away with.
To my relief, we made it by a scant 5 minutes. Whew!
Driving back to San Diego took ages. Traffic was slow and busy in LA even at the carpool lane. To make matters worst (or slower), I was driving. I am the least aggressive driver I know of. I usually stay in one lane (despite its turtle pace). I slow down at curves and I don’t drive over 70 mph. So my husband decided it was time for me to have a few lessons. As soon as traffic cleared, I was practicing my turns and lane switching. I was told to maintain my speed whenever possible and to go with the flow (meaning, drive just as fast as the other cars). After 5 hours, we were finally home.
To our surprise (and dismay), we had a disaster waiting at home. My husband told me that our pool was half empty and the filter was “blown off.” My mind went spinning. Was it because of the newly installed solar heater? Was it because of the 2.5 lbs. of DE (powder-like substance that coats the filter) that I put in 2 days ago? Was there a blockage in the filter? And on and on. You see, the pool is my charge. I maintain it. I check the water balance, clean it and add acid/chlorine whenever needed. The weight of the responsibility for the “disaster” was reeling in my head.
So instead of the restful weekend that our family was looking forward to, we ended up tending to pool matters. I went to Leslie’s for DE replacement FiberClear (which is biodegradable unlike DE), and cyanuric acid. I had a lengthy discussion with the store manager hoping to find some answers to what happened to our pool pump. Carsten tended to filling up the pool (15,000 gallons of water?!?!), cleaning it and the filter.
We had guests over from LA that day too. Gracia, who is my sister’s schoolmate from Bukidnon who is now in LA came with her friend Marie. It was a good break and I was finally speaking my dialect again. I cooked adobo (like always and because I really have limited cooking abilities).
We finally filled up the pool by 8pm (after 8 hours)…. then the next day comes rain and then another day of rain. That was the Monday morning with a hangover.
